A Cooler, Quieter Radeon HD 4870

With the fan resistor knob that comes with the VF900-Cu turned up about 1/3 of the way from its lowest setting, the card is almost totally silent at all times even in my extremely quiet PC. Idle temperature fluctuates between 45°–50°, depending on how warm the rest of my PC is at the time. After several hours of graphics-intensive gaming, the chip can get up to 80°—hot, but still cooler than the stock cooler and definitely quieter.

I should note that the VF900-Cu isn’t exactly the bleeding edge of VGA cooling efficiency, either. There are bigger VGA coolers out there, quieter ones, lots of options. Most of the good ones are likely to perform this well or better. Which begs the question: What’s wrong with ATI’s stock cooler? Shouldn’t they be able to keep up with a smaller, quieter aftermarket cooler? I have some theories. Looking at the cooler on ATI’s cards (and Nvidia’s, for that matter), it seems like the number of fins and their thickness isn’t necessarily the problem, though the material may be.

Rather, I think it’s all about the configuration—the way the heat pipes conduct heat, the way the fans draw air over the fins of the cooling system. The VF900-Cu’s fan, though thinner and spinning more slowly, is able to better cool amount of the fin surface area directly over the hottest part of the chip. In other words, it’s time for ATI to go back to the drawing board with their physical thermal management and come up with a more effective solution.

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